Should Leonard Cohen Be Considered a Great Jewish Poet?
JUNE 27 2017
Liel Leibovitz, author of a biography of the Canadian musician, believes he should be.
(Interview by Jonathan Silver. Audio, 42 minutes.)

I am no expert for answering the main question of this interview but I got some important answers to questions I myself had:

1.) I believe in Jesus and because Jesus was a jew I always found out that the spirituality of Jesus does not only have the same roots like the jewish faith but also leads back to these roots like a circle.

So I deeply agree that faith needs to know the fundamental creation order of god and as well the biblical knowledge and wisdom about humankind and struggling with your faith. I agree that forgetting religion or only staying on a peace-surfacecc of it means: "We blow out the flame!"

2.) Maybe to understand the bitter darkness in the song YOU WANT IT DARKER, especially: of love and help that never came as a warning for us is a good idea.

3.) When you are growing up in the middle of a deep faith and religious tradition it's also your nature and your culture and your pattern of perception as well as of your behaviour and language whether you see yourself as a believer or not. So Cohen deeply belonged to the Jewish culture and religion and loved it.

3.) Without knowing everything about faith and the bible you are understanding Cohen in a different way.

Liel Leibovitz's words about Cohen's ISAAC-lyrics fascinated me, it actually didn't let me go since days and kept me thinking about it all the time.

Suddenly one new idea came into my head when praying, reading and writing:

Who and how was God in the beginning after creation? Who was he in paradise for Adam&Eve before their betrayal? Please ask yourself!

He was much different from the god he later was on Mt Sinai!

But not he has changed but the heart of his children.
Although living fulfilled and close to god - their creator and father loving father - it came into the first human's had to betray god. Not out of missing anything. God gave them all his love and the paradise!Life was paradise for them. God was wonderful to them, there was deep love and happiness between them.

But Satan's impulse of becoming god themselves tempted them. The greed to have the highest power and status yourself!
Not cause of need but of greed.

After paradise this single human impulse deepened and still is deepening until today!

Now, please remember god's words later at Mt Sinai when only Moses was allowed to come closer to god. Even the priests weren't pure enough, holy enough to meet him without doing holy ceremonies before!

God showed them their change with new words about power, ownership, strength and laws and he connected with these new words to their hierarchical thoughts and to their own longing for having power on others!

God didn't need these words in paradise! This way of hierarchical power!He was a loving father.

And when he said: I am your only god. There are no more gods allowed! He also meant the "gods" of human priorities like your own interests and like even your own family!

He meant everything which keeps you apart from god!

And then he tested Abraham with Isaac!

And now: Who was and still is more in the ongoing lovestory with god?

The loving god who didn't forget his fallen children and tried to force them away from their own greedy longing to be god or those who (still) more and more forgot and forget who god is and who prevented their lost and vulnerable children from coming closer to god?

We who often describe god from our own focus of view as a cruel kind of dictator who is not loving or helping us.

Remember that later in the bible god warned people not to establish kingdoms cause of the danger to establish slavery with it.

And Jesus radically repeated god's "position"! He was a Jew and his spirituality leads in a circle directly back to the beginning: to the loving father!

So, the spirit of Leonard Cohen's lyrics seems to move people on without any borders.